


Metropolitan Graveyard

by suganegg



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: Character Study, Drug Use, Gen, Mental Instability, slight spoilers for ch 12 of shinjuku
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 19:51:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17966948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suganegg/pseuds/suganegg
Summary: Character study of Yan Qing as he is in Shinjuku.





	Metropolitan Graveyard

**Author's Note:**

> yan qing's state in shinjuku makes me really sad but i also find the way he acts/how the doppelganger affects his psyche pretty interesting, so i wanted to do a sort of character study. just a few notes first: the drug use is actually just the spinal fluid skill mats--i've seen a lot of fanart of him using it like a drug and i like that idea lol. i also make a few references to the water margin: fgo servants don't have listed ages, but yan qing is canonically 25 in the water margin so that's where that description comes from. the excerpt of lu junyi's dialogue comes from [this translation](http://uploads.worldlibrary.net/uploads/pdf/20130423230739the_outlaws_of_the_marsh_pdf.pdf), and the farewell scene between him and yan qing is on pages 986-987 for those interested.

Shinjuku Assassin has to admit, the apartments that Shinjuku Archer had commandeered for his unit's use are pretty swanky. They encompass the top floors of an expensive, high-rise complex with floor-to-ceiling windows which provide clear views of the city below. The building itself is quiet, the previous nouveau riche tenants having been thrown out to the street or killed when the building was commandeered; some parts of the building are still stained with dark, indelible blood that speaks to the resident ghosts.

Assassin enters his private bedroom and sets his gauntlets on the table that’s up against the wall, diagonal from the window. The place is decked out like a high-end hotel room: there's thick, cream-colored carpeting; a wired telephone sits in its cradle on the desk; a king-sized bed with a heavy comforter and a mountain of pillows is in the center of the room; curtains with weaving designs are hung on automatic runners; a wide and large CRT TV set is across from the bed; and the whole thing is complete with an en-suite bathroom. It’s not like Assassin really needs any of this—he could just as well do without it—but it feels good to indulge in the glories and luxuries of life. It’s what he deserves.

Assassin falls back against the mountain of pillows on the bed, grabs a remote from the nightstand, and turns on the TV. There’s nothing to see, of course. Just channel after channel of color blocks accompanied by a loud, ringing tone, or gritty static with a _skrrssh_ that scrapes against Assassin’s senses. No channels can be picked up from the wards that still survive outside Shinjuku’s walls, and all the broadcasting networks within the city are rundown and empty. What would the League put on the air, anyway? Public programming? That type of thing doesn’t exist anymore. But then again, producing and airing propaganda for the League doesn’t seem like a bad idea. He’ll have to remember it to bring up at the next meeting.

Assassin picks one of the color block channels at random, maybe it’s the same one that came up when the TV turned on, he doesn’t know. He mutes the volume to get rid of the ringing. Assassin leans back against the pillows and closes his eyes, but that’s when it starts, memories that aren’t his own playing like movies in front of his eyes. It’s like someone took footage from several different films and cut them all together without any sort of transitions—the images jerk from one scene to the next, to different people, different crimes, faces that he doesn’t know but somehow recognizes, the colors of Shinjuku’s lights giving every clip its palette, noises and voices and screams overlapping and becoming one multitude of noise, and then he sees robes, a back, walking away from him, and this isn’t Shinjuku anymore but—

_CRASH!_

Assassin stares blankly, sitting up, at the place where the crystal vase had hit the wall and exploded. He had grabbed it by the stem, almost unaware of what he was doing, from the bedside table and flung it as hard as he could against the wall. Water runs down the flawless white paint and pools over the crumpled flowers and shards of crystal on the floor. Who had even put that vase in the room? It hadn’t been himself, but maybe it had been one of his subordinates; there were some who hadn’t yet lost their sentimentality. And that there are still flowers in a hell like Shinjuku! Assassin can’t help but laugh, yet it’s mirthless and hard.

“Boss!” The Hornet that was stationed outside the door came running in at the crash. “Is everything okay? I heard—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Assassin leans back against the pillows, not bothering to explain the noise or the mess. “Go back to your post.”

The Hornet seems reluctant. “But. . .”

Assassin’s eyes flash as he’s suddenly filled with annoyance. “Get out of here and patrol the perimeter, or I’ll take your head off for disobedience. And take the other guards with you—I don’t want anyone else in this apartment.”

He had decided the first day that he moved into this complex that he wouldn’t kill someone in his own room; it’s easy to replace Hornets, but it’s a bitch to get bloodstains out of carpet. Despite that, he really feels like he might take the subordinate’s head off if he stands there in the threshold any longer.

The Hornet must sense the danger because he scrambles into a salute, “Y-Yessir!”

He turns on a dime and pulls the door shut behind him. Assassin shuts his eyes and massages around his eye sockets as he listens to the sounds of boots stomping and exiting the apartment. But once it’s quiet again the movies come back, only this time it’s all audio and no pictures. The voices are inseparable at first, saying nothing and everything at once in a roar, but one becomes stronger and stands out from the rest:

“—have it your way. Let’s see where you e—”

It’s the one voice Assassin especially doesn’t want to hear, the parting words of a useless and foolhardy lord. Assassin gets up and crosses to the bathroom, flicking on the light. He yanks open the cabinet behind the mirror with such force that he all but rips it off its hinges, and it’s a small wonder that the mirror hadn’t broken on the wall behind it. Within the cabinet there are stands holding delicate glass vials, the liquid inside red and glowing with a neon haze.

Assassin unwraps the black bandages on his left arm from fingers to bicep, which reveals the intricate and colorful tattoos that stretch across his skin. He ties the unwound bandages tightly across the top of his bicep and clenches his hand into a fist, though he can barely make out veins underneath the blues and greens of his tattoos. It really doesn’t matter, though; he all but knows the locations from memory at this point. He then picks up a vial and gives it a few flicks with his nail before breaking off its protective tip and revealing the sharp point beneath. Assassin holds the vial in his right hand, clenches his left fist again, and plunges the tip into his arm.

The neon fluid flows with an easy warmth into his veins as Assassin pushes down on the gold plunger, and he sighs in relief as the voices of the past—the Doppelgänger memories and his own—slowly quiet down. In this Shinjuku, a person can get any drug they want so long as they have the money. And Assassin has done that, tried various things, but this one is the most effective. It suppresses the Doppelgänger voices while also stimulating his own magical energy, so it’s beneficial on two fronts. Regular drugs just don’t give you that magical boost.

Assassin tosses the empty vial into the sink and unwinds his makeshift tourniquet before taking off the rest of the bandages across his arms. He throws them to the tile floor carelessly and then closes the cabinet, but he takes a second to inspect the reflection in the mirror. A man of about twenty-five with clear skin and a handsome, symmetrical face framed by silky black hair looks back at him. But the eyes are unsettling; they’re green and initially welcoming, but the longer you look into them the more a sense emerges that there’s something dangerous and sharp within their depths. Assassin reaches up and touches his cheek and the man in the mirror does the same, so this must be his own face that he’s looking at. But something in his mind isn’t sure.

He turns away from the mirror and hits the light switch on the way out of the bathroom. The bedroom is dim and lit only by the glow of the television and Shinjuku’s lights filtering in through the window. Assassin is restless and paces across the room a few times before coming to a stop in front of the broken mess of the vase. He crouches down on his haunches and snatches up a large, sharp piece of crystal.

Slowly, almost delicately, Assassin presses the pad of his thumb against the sharp point of the shard. He hisses as his skin splits open and watches carefully as ruby red drops of blood flow out and across the crystal. His blood has the same deep hue and metallic scent as any that he’s been bathed in from those he’s killed.

But it doesn’t give him any clues about who he is.


End file.
